Faith's Mom's Blog

It seems the only time I've been updating my blog lately is when the seasons change! This time, though besides the season changing from summer to fall, there are some changes happening with us as well. Faith in her new chair - another recent change for us! Many of you know I quit my full time job in the spring. My last day of work as a customer service representative for a health insurance company coincided with Faith's last day of school. I have been focusing on freelance writing full time. It has certainly been a time of depending on God to continue to supply for our every need! As a new school year approached, we decided not to send Faith back to school. After praying about it all summer, we made the decision to home school her instead. As I dropped off our paperwork to inform the school district of our intention, I felt an incredible amount of peace. To me, this is a sure sign that we made the right decision. Faith and friends at a library event Faith with

As all of the Fourth of July celebrations are coming to a close, I am still thinking about that one Fourth of July that happened ten years ago. It was around this time back in 2004 that we made the move from our home in Watford City to the Bismarck-Mandan area. I will never forget our first Fourth of July in Mandan. Due to getting moved in to our apartment, we didn't take in any of the celebrations. As we were still putting stuff away late into the night, I opened up the curtains and to my pleasant surprise, saw fireworks going off in the sky.  “Look!” I exclaimed to my husband, “We can see the fireworks from here!” He picked up Faith and lifted her to the window so she could see too. We couldn't have known it then but in our next ten years here, we would be experiencing fireworks of many kinds - some bright and beautiful and others complete duds! Faith playing in our first apartment After living in Mandan and driving Faith back and forth into Bismarck for all of

I think North Dakota forgot all about spring this year and just went right into summer. As our pastor said in church last week, "I guess North Dakota likes quick transitions!" It seriously seemed like one day the ground was still brown, the trees still bare and there wasn't a robin in sight then the next it was like the exact opposite. While everyone was certainly getting tired of old man winter, we sure weren't ready for 90 degrees! Faith enjoying being outside at Michelle's with her ducks! Besides it feeling like summer, I am thankful that it really is summer vacation and that Faith is done with school this year! She did so well the first half of fourth grade and somewhere along the way around Christmas vacation she seemed to really be struggling. We chalked it up to her high muscle tone protesting the frigid temperatures. When it started warming up a little, though there were days she still struggled to get to school. In February she came down with a sin

This past year has held many challenges, many changes and some breakthroughs as well. We have met some new people who have helped Faith make forward progress but have been discouraged as certain prayers continue to go unanswered. Through it all though, there is one truth that remains - God has been with us and He has been faithful. He has placed many people in our lives who have kept us encouraged and who continue to inspire us each and every day to to "walk by faith not by sight." As I think about our past year, I can't help but feel hopeful that the New Year will be better than the last! JANUARY - Me and Faith spent the tail-end of last year and the beginning of 2013 recovering from the flu. In fact, she was at the walk-in clinic on New Year's Eve. We recovered just in time to celebrate the NDSU Bison winning their second straight national championship. This year they are once again headed to Frisco, Texas to defend their title as they take on Towson Universi

We have been in our new apartment for about two weeks now and I have also made the transition from working at Coventry to Aetna. In the midst of moving upstairs in our building, I also moved up north to the Aetna building. In both moves, I am happy to find that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. Faith watches her pink tv in our new apartment On the homefront, the main reason we wanted to move to the top floor was because we were hoping it would be quieter. And it is! No more constant noise above our heads at all hours of the day! Although Faith still asks, "How long are we going to be living in this apartment," she is making the adjustment rather well. If there has been one thing to get used to - it has definitely been that it is a lot warmer on the top floor facing south! I mean, like really warm! The temps have gotten down to about 40 degrees at night and we still haven't turned on our heat. In fact, we had to hook up Faith's portable air conditio

We did something new as a family this weekend - we went to the United Tribes International Powwow . This year marks 44 years that the United Tribes Technical College here in Bismarck has hosted the huge event. Seventy tribes are represented at the event with over 1,500 dancers and drummers coming from all over the world to participate. The event draws over 20,000 spectators from Thursday through Sunday and the Bousfields were part of the crowd this year. Over 1,500 dancers participate in the Powwow It all started when Faith's class went to the event on a field trip. Unfortunately, it is hard to get a wheelchair to the arena where all the action takes place because there are no sidewalks and one has to push a chair through the grass which can be hard, especially when it is hot and humid outside with bees swarming everywhere. Her aid ending up not being able to get Faith to join her classmates at the arena. Faith was pretty upset about this and about her dad taking her home ea

Today marks Faith's 8th day of school and we are all adjusting to a new schedule. Faith has made huge strides this past summer in sleeping better and having more energy so we decided to have her go to school from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. 5 days a week. This is a change as last year she did not go Tuesday and Thursday afternoons due to how tired and worn out she would get. Faith's first day of 4th grade School starts at 8:30 a.m. but we asked if it would be okay for us to get her there at 9:00 instead. This allows us to more time to get her first feeding into her before she even gets to school. Her aides noticed last year that when we brought her to school without any food in her tummy, she was pretty sluggish and tired upon arrival. Sometimes, after getting her to school she wouldn't start getting her feeding until after 9:00 a.m. which meant, that because she gets a feeding every 3 hours, her last feeding of the day didn't end until 10:00 p.m. Another advantage to

All of us North Dakotans know that summer always goes by way too fast. While winter can last six long months, summer comes and goes before we know it. Normally, I don't mind when summer is over because I look forward to the fall and all the busyness that the new season brings. Not to mention the cooler weather, the changing leaves, and celebrating Faith's  birthday. But this year is different - I'm not quite ready to say goodbye to summer. Maybe I'm not quite ready because it has been unseasonably cool with temps in the 70s and low 80s - to me those are perfect temperatures! Or maybe I'm just not quite mentally prepared for Faith to go back to school where she'll be a 4th grader. Or it just might simply be this summer has a great one for our family and I'm sad to see it end.  Faith and I enjoyed hanging out on the patio at our apartment complex this summer Faith, on the other hand is all gung-ho to start school again. In fact, ever since it ended

The month of May is already nearly over - it makes perfect sense why it went by so fast as this month was jam-packed. It's hard to believe that June is just around the corner. I can share in our pastor's sentiment when he said the year is half over but it seems like 2013 has just begun! On the first Thursday of May, JOY Internationa l had its last Java JOY of the season. We had a great get-together as we celebrated moms and discussed the powerful prayers of a mom. We had a wonderful panel of three amazing moms who shared their hearts on praying for their children. We also shared testimonies of answered prayers for ourselves and our children. As Java JOY coordinator, I am relieved to be taking some time off but I already have lots of ideas for our next season which starts up again in September! Me with our mom panel at Java JOY Me and Faith on Mother's Day Me and Faith playing our favorite game - Wheel of Fortune At the beginning of the month we had another ro

It seems we've been celebrating Valentines Day all week as we spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday making our homemade Valentines boxes and cards. Faith's class had a party today and we had our own "old school" Valentines Day party at work. Faith normally doesn't stay at school on Thursday afternoons so we decided to give her the choice of whether or not she wanted to stay for the class party. I was a little disappointed when she said she didn't want to stay for it because I don't like her to miss out on doing fun things with her classmates. I do think though that the parties can get a little chaotic (especially with all that sugar intake) and I know it's hard for her to relax in that kind of atmosphere because her startle is constantly kicking in. Still, after dropping her off at school I couldn't help but feel a little sad that she was going to miss out on the party. We did have fun making the boxes and cards and looking at all our Valentines

We are currently on day four with no working elevator in our apartment building, one that it is supposed to be handicapped-accessible. It has been a little frustrating to say the least. It was supposed to be fixed on Wednesday afternoon but we are still waiting. No working elevator in this apartment building It has been going out off and on recently but just once was it a major inconvenience when we were getting Faith ready to go to school and realized the elevator was not working. Needless to say, she was late for school that day. This time we discovered the elevator was out on Monday after we called the Healing Rooms and realized they were open. We gleefully got bundled up in our winter attire - even the below-zero temperature was not going to stop us. We ran into a major disappointment though when we got to the elevator and realized it wasn't working. We went back to our apartment and figured out what to do next. We thought about having the Healing Rooms come to us beca

This year in review is a little belated - I had wanted to do it before the New Year actually began but both Faith and I fell ill with the flu and I had zero energy. It's hard to be creative with no energy! While I became sick shortly after Christmas, Faith got sick on New Year's Eve. On Friday, she finally felt well enough to go to school. Thank goodness for the miracle drug, tamiflu, which helped decrease our symptoms and the flu did not last as long as it might have without it. I am also thankful that although Rob had mild symptoms for a few days, he is already back to being well. So while we did not end 2012 very well, the New Year started off great as on January 5th the NDSU Bison won their 2nd straight football championship! Here is how 2012 went for us: JANUARY - Although last winter was pretty mild for us here in North Dakota, January still got pretty cold which kept us indoors a lot. One of Faith's favorite things to do is SKYPE with our friend Kimberly in